Power use soars as mercury plunges

It appears Western Australians don’t like the cold and they are drawing record levels of power to escape winter’s icy embrace.

As Perth woke to its coldest day in four years Western Power’s network answered an overnight demand from customers to the tune of 3628.8 megawatts at 6.36pm.

The new winter peak continued a trend of historically high system demand levels on the network for this time of year.

Since the official start of winter this year the previous record of 3445.5 megawatts set back in 2014 has been eclipse three times with demand on each occasion above 3600 megawatts.

With the Bureau of Meteorology predicting the chilly conditions to carry on until at least Friday Western Power will be watching for a new peak to be set before Sunday.

The new winter record is a far cry from the summer peak, which was also set this year, in February of 4304 megawatts but highlights the extremes that the network and customers face throughout the year.